Senior Management.

Jeremy Hobbs, Chairman |  Leslie Boyd-Bradley, VP Sales

Jeremy W. Hobbs, Chairman

Hard work and a solid education have always been the underpinnings of the American Dream. And for many like Jeremy Hobbs, they still are. He learned his work ethic early on by volunteering next to his parents at a community center as a child and by working on the family business around the kitchen table.

His parents ran a management and public policy business where Jeremy worked to pay his way through a Jesuit high school, then later Pomona College.

Of course, hard work isn’t always enough. Jeremy saw this firsthand when his parents divorced, leaving his mother, a special education teacher, financially unstable. This left an indelible impression and later became a personal mission: to help women find strength and independence on their own, whatever the circumstances.

His passion for social justice deepened during his years at the University of Chicago Law School. He began working for Marshall Patner, a civil rights and cause-related lawyer well-know in Chicago. After graduating cum laude and as an editor of the Law Review, he joined Patner’s firm full-time. He quickly developed a specialty in representing dozens of women seeking cancer treatments whose insurance companies were declining coverage.

The next stop was at Krasnow, Sanberg, Cornblath and Hobbs, a startup that provided legal services to non-profits and small, family-owned businesses. He became Chairman of Stop AIDS Chicago, where he was introduced to the at-home party business model, in this instance with a focus on awareness and education.

One of his clients was Allen D. Petersen, then majority owner, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American Tools Cos. Inc, the largest privately held hand tool and power tool accessories company in the world. Soon Jeremy was his right-hand for strategic direction and acquisitions, and later the co-architect of its complex sale to Newell Rubbermaid. By then, the company had grown from $45M to $500M in sales.

Soon after, Jeremy and Allen formed Draupnir, LLC, a holding and operating company based in Chicago. Between 2002 and 2005, Draupnir invested in 15 business enterprises, including EOS, Inc., a holding company that owned Discovery Toys. In 2005, Jeremy Hobbs became Draupnir CEO, and then sole owner upon Mr. Peterson’s passing.

With a new chapter came new focus on a streamlined portfolio of fewer businesses of greatest interest. Particularly Discovery Toys, which he’d been evaluating for sometime. As the child, brother and nephew of educators, Jeremy knew that Discovery Toys was a natural fit for his life-long passion(s) for quality education and encouraging economic self-sufficiency. The needs at Discovery Toys were clear: a radical rebirth from product to compensation to digital to operations. And that was just the beginning. Taking the reins just in 2008, he applied his considered observations into swift action, ready to make use of the potential of the company’s unique position alongside current market and cultural forces. Since then, Jeremy and his assembled teams of experts and consultants have begun the work of making Discovery Toys game-changing for the category and life-changing for children, families and educators.

When not immersed in Discovery Toys, Jeremy continues to balance his considerable energies on Draupnir’s other concerns as well as several charities and private foundations in his hometown of Chicago.

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Leslie Boyd-Bradley, Vice President of Sales

With more than 35 years experience, Leslie has enjoyed a successful career in direct sales and network marketing. Working her way up in the industry beginning as a Consultant at the age of 18, Leslie has gained extensive knowledge and industry experience as a result. Her sales, personal development and training expertise benefits Discovery Toys Consultants in ways that create motivation and help them advance their business skills. She develops training, education and is a natural at personal and team coaching.

Leslie had the industry in her heart from a tender, young age, having watched and worked with her parents to build an incredible business and career with Tupperware®. That ignited a personal desire to go down the entrepreneurial path. She followed in her parents’ footsteps by building her own business with Tupperware, and achieving the corporate level of Vice President leading the #1 region in the US. She then continued her executive career with several start up and established party plan companies. Currently, Leslie’s focus is to motivate the field to sponsor and train new Consultants, help promote new leaders and build the company’s leadership.

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